After running three hopeful items today, I have to mention a terrible event: the carjacking and murder of Channon Christian, 21, and her boyfriend, Christopher Newsom, 23, in Knoxville, Tennessee last weekend. The killers shot Newsom and burned his body, then they held Christian a prisoner for several days, raping her repeatedly, then killed her. The suspects are two black predatory savages of the exact type we see over and over in newspaper stories of this nature, wandering about free in our society, ready to pounce. Look at the photos of the victims and of the suspects.

Could this have happened in pre-1960s America? No, and especially not in the South, because white society was frankly on guard against this very sort of thing, and held the black population under a rule and a discipline. That rule went too far, especially in the Jim Crow laws that required racial discrimination. But how tragic and ironic that because of white racial discrimination against blacks, and because of racial atrocities by whites such as the murder of Emmett Till, whites in a fit of liberal guilt went to the other extreme, erasing the consciousness of racial realities altogether, and thus rendering themselves, and especially their young women, naïve and innocent and helpless before black savagery. For decades, black murderers and rapists have been committing violent crimes against whites that in numbers and in pure savagery are orders of magnitude beyond anything that whites ever did or remotely imagined doing to blacks in the 1950s. Yet, far from taking measures to stop this racial phenomenon of black predation of whites, white society doesn’t even recognize its existence.

I know I am about to ask a question that is super politically incorrect, but I feel that I can ask you as you clearly understand this reality: Why do blacks act like total savages? I live in downtown Philadelphia. The conduct of the average black man is unfathomable to me as a white man. (I know you live in NYC and I’m sure you don’t need me to spell out the details.) Are they a cursed race by God? Or are the Steve Sailer types correct in that they haven’t evolved as much as the white man? Your article really hit home for me as a white man living in a black city. Every day I endure their misbehavior and I am a loss for its explanation. (And I say this to the liberals: this is not about money. Even the blacks with money in Philadelphia misbehave more than whites with money.)

LA writes:

Five factors come to mind:

Physical racial differences. Blacks, especially males, are on average significantly less intelligent and significantly more impulsive and violent than whites. Read Phillipe Rushton’s book, which lays out the fundamental differences between blacks, whites, and East Asians along a scale of aggression and impulsiveness versus restraint and forethought, with blacks the most aggressive and impulsive, and Asians the least.

The inherent tensions of a bi-racial or multiracial society. In a society in which whites are the dominant majority and are far more civilizationally advanced and wealthier than the blacks, in which many blacks because of their low IQs are hopelessly behind everyone else, and in which all formal racial discrimination and segregation has been eliminated, black predatory and other disorderly and hostile behavior against whites becomes inevitable.

Post-1960 liberalism, which, by removing racial discrimination, and by dismantling moral restraints, social authority, and law and order, allows the most primitive among us to act out.

Also released and exacerbated by post-1960 liberalism, which tells blacks that all their troubles are due to white racism and that whites simply owe them, there is black racial animus and racial vengeance against whites. Blacks’ ecstatic reaction to the O.J. Simpson acquittal (much like Muslims’ ecstatic reaction to the 9/11 attack) revealed their true moral nature and their true feelings toward whites.

Massive black fatherlessness.

James R. writes:

Letalvis and Lemaricus! I hope some law enforcement officer didn’t offer up the standard “We have two gentlemen in custody” inoffensive, racially-conscious statement. These animals obviously come from one of those neighborhoods where mass confusion is defined as Father’s Day, and teenage mothers draw letters from a Scrabble bag until they have enough to constitute what they “think” amounts to a fitting non-Anglo name. Too bad these bastards didn’t meet the same fate as Sharffeequa.

LA replies

Does anyone have the statistics on black on white rapes? 15,000 per year sounds awfully high.

Mark A. replies:

Thanks very much.

While I wonder if this question is going over the line, have you ever felt that blacks just clearly don’t belong in a First World European/American society? Sometimes I wonder if James Monroe and his Liberia-type emigration schemes were the last chance to save law-abiding whites from this menance. The problem seems to be similar to the Moslem problem: we know what happens when they are here (regardless of our fantasies about how they should behave), so the only solution is separation.

LA replies:

You’re not going over the line because this was once a widely discussed issue. Lincoln of course hoped for this, but after he proposed it to Northern black leaders in 1862 and they totally rejected it, he gave it up and moved toward what had always been inconceivable, even (I believe) to most abolitionists: freed blacks, living in America alongside whites.

While one doesn’t have to agree with his point about extermination, Jefferson’s analysis of the fundamental incompatibilty of the races and the incurable social conflicts and disasters that must result from having a free black and white population living together has been largely borne out:

Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the State, and thus save the expense of supplying by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions, which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. [Italics added]. [Notes on Virginia, Query XIV, 1782].

Now of course, things have not worked out as badly as Jefferson predicted. Many blacks are far more integrated into America than Jefferson imagined was possible. Nevertheless, the fundamental incompatibility, the ineluctable racial conflict between black and white that he diagnosed, is still there. Remember also that it was mainly in response to the problem of black inequality that America adopted non-discrimination and minority advancement as its highest principles, leading to the open immigration of every people in the world into America and the steady dismantling of our culture and nation.

The way out of these racial dilemmas, or at least a way to survive them, is through the restoration of a self-conscious white majority culture which acts like the majority, as I have outlined here.

Mark A. continues:

I note that you added fatherlessness to your list. I can see that being a major factor in unemployment, sloth, property crime, etc. But shooting and burning a man, and then raping and murdering his wife? There is something so psychopathic about that that I fear it goes beyond fatherlessness. It is pure evil.

John Hagan writes:

One of the constant “tricks” the mainstream media used throughout the 80s and 90s until the public got wise to it was obscuring, or not mentioning the race of most criminals, especially when it was black on white crime.

The late Boston radio talk show host David Brudnoy courageously confronted this fiction in the early ‘90s night after night until he forced the Boston Globe, and other media sources to go public about this issue. It was fascinating to watch the media lie until they were overwhelmed with the facts.

The color of violent crime in America is predominately black; and though I loath most conspiracy theories, the American media for many years engaged in an organized cover-up of these facts.

LA replies:

What do you mean they went public? That they publicly discussed their policy of not reporting the race of suspects? Or that they began to report the race of suspects?

Karen W. writes:

That is a monstrous and brutal crime, which goes beyond typical black impulsive savagery. This was premeditated and dehumanising. You might like to watch this 10min clip from a documentary by one of South Africa’s leading documentary makers about the genocidal violence being perpetrated against whites in South Africa. Some of the pictures are very gory and a white lady describes, in some detail, a violent attack which she miraculously survived.

It seems the violent attacks are premeditated and are being orchestrated as a campaign of genocide against whites. Was not the black Archbishop Tutu of South Africa once caught on film, encouraging the slaughter of whites? And he did attend the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan where speaking before a packed audience of Reformed Jews, Tutu repeatedly referred to the Jews as “racists” and openly called for the destruction of Zionism and Israel. The Reformed Jews gave Tutu repeated standing ovations after he called for their annihilation. He also called for an end to “Israeli Apartheid,” “theft” of Arab land and U.S. aid to Israel.

These blacks are pursuing a vendetta against whites and it is time we campaigned for their forced repatriation to Africa, their rightful home. We require separation from blacks as well as from Moslems. Let the blacks sort out their own problems and return to their tribal existence (in which I must say they are much happier as any kind of civilisation does not suit them and brings out the worst in them).

LA replies:

Karen’s proposal goes beyond anything VFR has said but I post it because it is not an inherently unreasonable statement. Leading blacks such as Randall Robinson constantly speak in such a way as to express their undying animus against white America, their view of it as an evil country. Black writers say over and over that blacks can never can a fair chance in white America. Many many blacks agree with these things. Blacks as a group expressed their agenda of racial revenge in their reaction to the O.J. Simpson verdict. All this being the case, it is not unreasonable for Karen to propose that the solution to this problem that the blacks themselves see as incurable is for the blacks to leave America.

In effect, Karen is calling the blacks’ bluff: Hey, if that’s they way you feel about whites and about white America, how do you expect them to feel about your being in America?

Dana writes:

I too live in Philadelphia and grew up in a black professional class neighborhood (Overbrook Farms).

You think its hard dealing with black men as a male? Try being a woman in a black city for 15 minutes Since I turned twelve years old I’ve had 100s of strange black men come up to me and LITERALLY put their arms around me and ask me to marry them, did I want some chocolate to go with that vanilla and where am I going with my big legs and can they come with me.

I’ve come to realize that they literally have NO IDEA that I hail from a culture where men are more reserved in their attentions to women and its inconceivable to them that I find their behavior alarming and intrusive, behavior THEY believe is a high compliment.

While whites have been beating themselves senseless on the rocky shores of multi-culturalism and tolerance, other ethnic groups haven’t deigned to lift a finger to understand our culture or care. (Assuming that I as an Ashkenazi Jew am even allowed to consider myself white, an issue I find terribly confusing in The Universe of a Million Types of Race Realist).

LA replies:

Some white nationalists say that only Northern Europeans are, properly speaking, white. However, as a fellow Ashkenazi Jew, I’ll say that we can always call ourselves by the broader term, Caucasian. Even the hard-line far whites can’t object to that. :-)

By the way, a photo of me has been posted for years at Stormfront, identifying me as an Aryan spokesman. While I’m not conspicuously Jewish-looking, I don’t see how any of those racially alert Stormfront types could think I was Aryan.

Stephen T. writes:

John Hagan writes, “One of the constant “tricks” the mainstream media used throughout the 80s & 90s until the public got wise to it was obscuring, or not mentioning the race of most criminals, especially when it was black on white crime.”

Throughout the 1990s the L.A. Times had a policy of not mentioning the nationality or immigration status of Mexican nationals who were accused or convicted of crimes—even when these were established facts and known to reporters. It was deliberately kept secret. The catch is, they did not withhold such information re crimes committed by immigrants from other countries.

This, of course, only led to readers “guessing” about these matters and, after a while, some of us got pretty good at it. The racist fact is, by reading the description, certain crimes just have “Mestizo Mexican” written all over them. (Here’s one giveaway: If the perpetrator is shown on live TV shaking his fist and shouting expressions of defiant bravado at the police helicopter hovering overhead during the high-speed chase after the crime, you can count on it: when they drag him out of that car, he won’t turn out to be a legal immigrant from Norway.)

David H. writes:

The major reason that your site is, in my opinion, far and away the most important political and philosophical site on the internet is that you have no fear of rationally discussing topics such as this. What happened in Knoxville was a heinous act of depravity and sheer evil that rivals anything done by the most vile of “human” creatures (al-Queda, the Nazi executioners, the NKVD agents, Idi Amin, and far, far too many others; perhaps not in scope but on the individual level, absolutely ). There will be not one word from the “feminists,” even though that innocent woman was abducted, her boyfriend was murdered and burned (probably in front of her), she was tormented, raped, tortured and murdered. She could not successfully fight these beasts—she was completely under their brutal power. There will be no word from the race-hustling extortionists who were so fast to rage against the Duke lacrosse players. I would be shocked if “conservatives” condemn this act in the proper manner because they will be terrified of being called “racist.” Mr. Auster, how relieved I am that you are unafraid to mention the reality of these types of disgusting, abominable crimes. Sadly I believe (though I hope to God I am wrong) that, as blacks and other non-white groups are taught by leftists (and even “conservatives” in some cases) to hate us and to despise the very people and culture that enabled them to escape jungle diseases and barbarism, these crimes will become more and more common.

By the way, I am Slavic—and although not Aryan I too am white.

Mark P. writes:

That is the reason why the South allows people to have legal carrying permits for handguns in their cars. I wonder why these kids weren’t armed?

James R. writes:

And yes, everyone’s suspicions about rape are correct: Every year there are about 15,000 black-on-white rapes but fewer than 900 white-on-black rapes. There are more than 3,000 gang rapes of whites by blacks—but white-on-black gang rapes are so rare they do not even show up in the statistics.

http://www.vdare.com/taylor/050913_crime.htm

John Hagan replies to my above request for clarification on David Brudnoy’s exposure of the Boston Globe:

Ok, let me flesh this out as I remember it Over a period of months David got call after call from listeners to his show complaining about the wide-spread media policy, especially in the Boston Globe, of not identifying black criminals in its crime reporting as blacks. People knew by the area, and types of crimes committed, that the perpetrators were most likely blacks. Plus the Globe would always identify any white on black crime by race.

David started exposing this behavior every evening by using other sources showing that papers like the Globe were purposely not mentioning the race of minority criminals. The Globe denied this, but David did not let up exposing this “policy”

One of the editors of the Globe came on David’s show to arrogantly deny that the paper had such a policy. Much to the shock of the editor several Globe employees called in anonymously and exposed this policy. David also had internal memos that showed there was indeed such a policy enforced at the paper. After this, needless to say, the Globe would offer “no comment” on this issue in the future,

The issue faded away as time went on because the public got wise to this bit of subterfuge, and with the internet it was no longer easy for major media outlets to control the flow of information. This was a big issue in the early 90s.

LA replies:

Thanks, an interesting story. So Brudnoy exposed definitely that the Globe did it, and he got the Globe to stop dishonestly denying that it was doing it, but, bottom line, the Globe kept doing it.

The New York Post used to report the race of black suspects, and sometime in the ‘90s stopped doing so. I hate when that happens.

Shrewsbury writes:

Nicholas Stix at VDare.com today (Saturday), near the end of a very long article:

As the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Study (NCVS) has shown, between 2001 and 2003, there were, on average, 15,400 black-on-white rapes per year, while whites averaged only 900 white-on-black rapes per year (a black-white ratio of 17.1:1). As Parker noted, the proportion of single-attacker white-on-black rape is so rare as to be statistically non-existent (less than one-half of one percent).

Since there are five-and-one-half times as many whites as blacks in America, that means that blacks rape whites over ninety times as frequently as whites rape blacks. Except that the black-white interracial gap is actually much higher. The “white“ figure (900) is inflated by Hispanic offenders being counted as white. And no reliable statistics for interracial prison rape were included in the NCVS. Thus, the real black-white ratio is likely 200:1 or higher.

But the Duke case was an allegation of white-on-black gang rape. As Roy Sievers at American Renaissance showed on April 24, quoting the state-of-the-art AR study, The Color of Crime, that crime hasn’t been committed in years:

“In fact, whereas blacks committed 10,000 gang-rapes against whites between 2001 and 2003, the NCVS samples did not pick up a single ‘white’ [including Hispanic]-on-black gang rape.”

Could it be that Southern white men knew what would happen and acted accordingly to maintain a society for their women and children that was relatively free of this sort of thing? Maybe the laws required discrimination to protect against the effects of racial liberalism (which has a long history among whites in the U.S., particuarly those that lived in Northern areas with few Blacks)?

I guess I get angry when I read stories like the above but I also feel a bit sad. I feel more loyalty towards American blacks than I do to Mexicans, Muslims, etc. because we have a common history of hundreds of years (if not a common continental ancestry). We also have a common religion, namely Protestantism, although this is waning as many blacks and whites reject God and a fair number of blacks “submit.”

I’m probably more angry at liberals/leftists for tearing down the social institutions that moderated the behavior of blacks and whites. And I’m angry at “conservatives” for not pointing this out. They could have liberals/leftists by the B@LL$ if they would just grow some themselves. I’m sorry to write that on Sunday but it’s true.

LA replies:

Well, conservatives and neoconservatives used to point things like this out. Analyzing the bad effects of various social policies was a pillar of neoconservatism. Consider Charles Murray’s Losing Ground for example. But the neocons relegated concerns to the second or third tier of their priorities some time ago. Once the spread of universal democracy became the be-all and the end-all here, upon this bank and shoal of time, then all people—including blacks and sharia-believing Muslims—had to be seen as equally desirous of and deserving of and ready for freedom and democracy, and therefore as naturally and equally good, and there was no basis for criticizing or seeking to moderate anyone’s behavior—unless, of course, we were speaking of that tiny minority of “dead-enders” who “hate freedom.” Thus neoconservatism turned into an extreme version of the very thing it had once opposed, a whacked-out social improvement scheme with vast unintended negative consequences, applied not just to America, but to the whole world.

Bruce continues:

It sometimes seems that a significant minority of blacks really do act like “total savages” in one way or another. For instance, I’ve noticed (and so have others around me so I know I’m not crazy) that many black men walk around in public (malls, convenience stores, sidewalks, etc.) holding their genitals. Not just a quick grap like Michael Jackson. I don’t see the “wigger” types doing this even though they seem to want to imitate black youths in every way. The same types that do this often seem to have an almost vacuous look on their face. I guess this might be a learned behavior as I don’t see the older black men doing this.

LA replies:

That’s really interesting about the holding genitals. About 20 years ago that was very common in New York City. Young black men had this way of repeatedly reaching down every few moments to touch their genitals (not hold their genitals). I was amazed at this, and then after a few years I noticed that this particular piece of Afro-American cultural expression had vanished. I figured it had been the body language of one generational cohort, just as each black generation has its own way of expressing the African-American essence—Zoot suits, Afros, baggie pants exposing underwear, etc. But now, according to you, the genital touching (or holding?) has made a comeback.

As for the proportion of the black community that is savage, I would roughly estimate that a quarter to a third of blacks are on a completely different level from the rest of us in terms of their lower intelligence and are not capable of participating in civilization at all. If you think that statement makes me racist, remember that the honored Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that among the lower class blacks we were witnessing a process of speciation.

However, I must say that I’ve had the same thought about whites in different parts of the country. For example, I was at a state fair in Syracuse, New York a couple of years ago, and everywhere were 300 or maybe 400 pound white people. To me that seemed like speciation.

Robert B. writes:

At the risk of sounding like a “racist,” I must point out to your readers that it was behavior such as this that caused the formation and rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the “Old South” during the ten years of reconstruction. During that time, white men in the South had no vote as Congress had declared them all felons. Thus, the only people with a vote were northern carpetbaggers and former slaves who could not read and whose votes were easily bought and sold. These former slaves, now elected officials, used their new power to persecute whites under the protection of a Northern army of occupation.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, former general in the Confederate Army, formed the KKK as a vigilante counterforce to what amounted to nothing more then legalized illegal activity. Once reconstruction ended and whites had the power of legally protecting themselves from abuse once again, Forest abandoned the KKK. Later on, when it had devolved into a senseless terror based organization, he disavowed it entirely in a public speech.

The movie, Birth of a Nation, which I studied in a film class in college, was the story of the birth and rise of the KKK in its original form. I believe, personally, that the reason that it has been pilloried in recent times (thought it is still a highly regarded piece of film within in the film community itself) is just because it is highly instructive, in terms of depicting the fall of our civilization into a more savage and barbaric one without restraint and as a manual on how to counteract that fall and protect oneself and their loved ones. When government refuses to be responsible, then it becomes incumbent upon the individuals within society to band together and take matters into their own hands.

As Machiavelli wrote in “The Prince”:

“And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”

Michael K. writes:

I’d be amazed if these vile subhuman degenerates didn’t have histories of violence and criminality beginning at age 13 or 14, perhaps even 11 or 12, depending on when they reached puberty; thus I’d be amazed if they didn’t have at least five to ten prior felony arrests and convictions. So why were they free to commit kidnapping, gang-rape, torture, and murder?

The United States imprisons more of its citizens than any other country, yet hundreds of thousands of violent criminals, overwhelmingly black and “Hispanic,” are still coddled by left-liberal judges. Over two million men and women are in prisons and jails, yet millions of violent crimes are still committed each year, overwhelmingly by black and “Hispanic” males (including pubescent teenage males under age 18 who are now defined as “children”), and violent crime among blacks and “Hispanics” is now on the rise in most cities. What does this tell you?

Ian B. writes:

While whites may, on average, have more intelligence than blacks (I’m undecided on this point), I don’t think that intelligence dictates morality. This was an act of evil, and blaming it on intelligence (not saying that you’re doing this necessarily) does the same thing that liberal multiculturalism does—abdicates them of moral responsibility and culpability—but by another route.

For the same reason, I don’t agree that a quarter to a third of blacks are simply, intrinsically incapable of participating in civilization. Regardless of intelligence, all men are made in the image of God, which implies the ability to grasp the transcendent, and moral responsibility for one’s actions. They aren’t beasts, and if we want to talk of them in that way, then we would be obliged to talk about black crime in passive tones, in the way we do when an animal mauls someone, without moral outrage. While some parts of what goes into the overall mixture we call intelligence are physical, I don’t think that our minds, or the choices we make, can be reduced to the material.

I think that by far the main source of the problem is the moral double-standard that we’ve set in this nation. There’s this idea that blacks are actually entitled to misbehavior, as a sort of penance on our part, so as to “get even” with the rest of us. On top of this is moral relativism and multiculturalism, which excuses the moral lapses of *any* cultural group as “right for them”. The latter is applied to all immigrants, and causes various problems, but only with blacks is it combined with the poisonous notion that they are entitled to, and excused for, revenge on the rest of society. And on top of all that, there’s the old liberal promise that blacks don’t need to take care of themselves, because the government will do it for them.

I daresay that the vast majority of kids, regardless of intelligence, if brought up being told by society that acting on their basest impulses is “right for them”, that they have been oppressed and cheated by everyone else, and that they are entitled and encouraged to exercise revenge, will end up as punks, and likely violent ones at that. The parents of such kids would need to work overtime to compensate for it.

However, if these parents had been brought up with a similar background themselves, that probably wouldn’t happen, and you’d see the problem get worse and worse with each generation—which is precisely what we see going on.

LA replies:

You’re making valid points, but I don’t think anybody here blamed this evil act on low intelligence per se. Yes, low intelligence is correlated with violent crime. But obviously there are a lots of low-intelligence people who don’t commit crimes like this. The question of low intelligence may have come up as part of the general problem of blacks’ performance in society.

I don’t think anyone in this discussion was removing the moral responsibility of the people who did this. Even low IQ people are agents who are responsible for what they do.

At the same time, moral responsibility is not the key question here. The key question is what society has done to unleash this kind of criminality and what it must to do protect itself. The destruction of moral standards and social authority has had a bad effect on most people’s character and behavior over the last 40 years. But low IQ people require social restraints and direction more than high-IQ people, and so the moral liberalization of society has damaged the lower IQ blacks more.

When we add onto that the license that society gives to blacks for anti-white racism, we have a real problem.

The fact that people differ markedly in the degree of their self-control does not deny each person’s responsibility for his acts. However, the ultimate question that matters to us is not where the moral agency for crimes lies, but how to stop the crimes and forms of disorder. Some people are inherently more impulsive and disorderly than others, and require greater external controls. Thus separate schools for blacks and whites make sense because blacks require stronger authority and discipline than would be appropriate for whites, though of course whites require disclipine too. A problem I detect is that you seem to be advocating a universalism which does not fit the facts of racial difference. Speaking as if all members of all groups have equal self-control is a dangerous mistake, like believing that everyone is equally ready for democracy. This is not to say that there are different moralities. The same morality applies to all. But in order to live within that common morality, different people may require different types of social structure. America’s race-blind ideology prevents us from seeing or discussing these facts of life. It does not enhance our humanity, but harms it.

Wesley F. writes:

I appreciated your article discussing the Atrocity in Knoxville.

In Columbus, Ohio where I live there was a similarly gruesome case of kidnap and mayhem that was duly suppressed by the media. With little of no coverage in the media these episodes will only increase and serve as a carte blanche for those African Americans who see revenge for previous wrongs done to ancestors as a legal license to rape and murder.

In Columbus Ohio two years ago a 21 year white woman moved into an upscale apartment newly built in an urban renewal neighborhood. She was kidnapped from her apartment and brutalized multiple times by two African American men. She was locked in the trunk of her car for the next 24 hours while the two young men decided what to do with her. Finally they set the car on fire with her in the trunk with her suffering an agonizingly slow death. As you would expect the media barely reported this episode, last page on the local news, lower right hand corner.

James R. writes:

Mark P. writes: “That is the reason why the South allows people to have legal carrying permits for handguns in their cars. I wonder why these kids weren’t armed?”

Carjackers know that there is only a very slim chance that their victim(s) will defend themselves in this situation.

If there was even a one in three chance that the intended victim of a carjacking would react by drawing a firearm and be prepared to use it this crime would virtually disappear. Giant strides in self-defense have been made in Alaska and Vermont where law-abiding citizens are not required to have a concealed carry permit for a handgun. If every state were to adopt such a law and have reciprocity agreements with the other states, predators would not automatically view the majority of citizens as prey.

N. writes:

James R. is right up to a point. Tennessee has issued concealed handgun permits for some years now, and they are not difficult to obtain for those persons with a clean criminal record. The training to become proficient with a hand-held firearm is not that onerous, given a normal person who wants to learn, and sadly enough there are people in the Knoxville area who can and do train others in the safe & effective use of firearms.

These two young people could have repelled the attack, given the right training, but frankly the information I have on carjacking suggests to me it is likely they could have simply driven out of danger if they’d thought of that solution quickly enough.

Some states allow carry of firearms in cars without a permit, although this differs from state to state and what’s legal in, say, Colorado would get one in very big trouble in Maryland. The will to resist is as important as tools.

In the larger analysis, though, one has to wonder why the kind of people who would do this crime are walking around free in the first place.